Life's Dream
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Summary: Aeris forgotten and unmourned by a thousand faces of Midgar but her dream and love lives on forever. [Cloud x Aeris]


Life's Dream by CrimsonFuchsia  
  
Author's Note: This is my first ever attempt at a Final Fantasy VII story (shame on me for waiting so long!) though I've worshipped the game and its dazzling characters for years now. But please, bear in mind that I'm new at writing in this genre so please be gentle - I'm very fragile! That said, I'm a feedback addict so please review with any comments, compliments or constructive criticism. This 'fic is about Aeris; my all-time favourite character, her life, her death and her relationship with Cloud. Though I'm strictly a Cloud/Aeris supporter but I mean this as no insult against Tifa, as people can still be a bit touchy about this damn triangle. Tifa is a fascinating character and I like her and want her to be happy, but I just don't think she and Cloud are right for each other. Just my opinion. Oh yeah, on a technical note, the title is just a pun or a play on words for 'lifestream', I think it captures what I'm hoping to portray here. Anyway, enough inane rambling and on with the story - enjoy!  
  
Life's Dream  
  
They did not notice she was gone, nor felt her leaving.  
  
Yet Aeris Gainsbrough, Cetra and Flower Girl had left the home the slums had become, unknown to her or anyone else that she would never return. The dark city of Midgar continued and persevered as it always had, shrouded in choking Mako fumes, eternal night, consuming poverty and the tightening stranglehold of Shinra, cold, grey and stench-ridden like that of a rotten corpse. The pockets of the rich continued to be lined and laced with gold, refined by the suffering of the planet. The people, upper, the detested upper-middle, middle and working classes trudged along dimly through their lives as they always had, devoured by petty problems such as the next bill and their spouse's horrific new pair of shoes and shallow musings on AVALANCHE and if the lack of light in the cruel city would make their skin sallow.  
  
They did not notice that a simple flower girl had left the dark, infected scar of the planet that their city was, refusing to pay attention on such featureless matters. They did not even notice she was there to begin and did not notice her absence. Neither did they miss her. Fate had fooled them all, weaving the wool and pulling it with pitiless skill over their ignorant eyes and time, ever flowing by in silver streams, considered with bland organisation this event and neatly divided itself into two separate states - before and after. The loss of her had struck out the only spark remaining in the sombre city.  
  
Before; the time when all were naïve children, playing the careless disregard, laughing and dusting their rough knees. They stumbled blindly, drawn to a single spark of life, though upon reaching her, they closed their empty eyes to her. Who could notice a simple flower girl? She was nothing special and had nothing that gave her cause to be placed in the dusted corridors of their memories. Apart from her light; the sheer force of love and spirit that seemed to flow from that quiet stature, the calm, face gently revealing a sweet, disarming smile, the palm of a small, smooth hand, despite years of life in the city's lifeless slums, open and offering a flower. And those deep green eyes; like the fresh meadows she had seen only in her dreams, smiling and dancing whilst her slender yet strong form remained still, standing amongst shadows and smothering darkness, murderous disillusionment and the death of hope and dreams - the very fibres of Midgar.  
  
As she stood there, offering a part of her brightness, of the tender soul she possessed, a whisper of innocent life in a city that never knew innocence, however calm or serene she appeared, she was destructive. She destroyed the image of Midgar as a dark world, devoid of a single ember of warmth, she silently defied the cold and the dark, rebelling by nurturing the invalid spark of life that dwindled and lingered within the barren womb of the a city infested by soulless technology and slobbering greed. With a single flower, she offered a passer-by their life back, a chance to renew their forgotten dreams and revive any defeated feelings with a single sleeping blossom, its gentle light as potent to the faded spirit as an elixir to a wounded body.  
  
Yet she was not noticed, the friendly warmth of a young girl was largely forsaken for the friendlessness of their own business as they waded through the thick marshes of solitude, too absorbed in reaching the muted green tangle of vines than pay attention to the lonely rose within the pungent swamp. They moved on past her, not seeing a delicate form, brushing past her with cold rudeness or sightlessness. Other times, a stranger would stop, her bright voice, so full of joy so alien to them in its purity catching their hearts. They would fumble with money, their fingers bumbling with gauche rush, mumbling a few slurred words, perhaps scanning the shape of her ripe young form with a ravenous, lascivious gaze, take the flower without appreciating it, without taking in its rich senses, without knowing what it symbolised. They hardly looked at her face; their muddy eyes too preoccupied with their hands, their money and their purchase, the flower girl, so unusually cheerful with an infectious bubble of golden laughs and heart-warming smiles never penetrating past their petty distractions, never reaching their memory, still lost in the comforting mist of deja-vu.  
  
They did not remember her and did not understand the significance of a flower's shy beauty and kindly grace. It was just a flower, after all. And she was just a simple flower girl. She stood and smiled with welcoming happiness, as much an ethereal presence as the haunting peace of the Sector Six church and the melodious atmosphere, the quiet flourish of life and nature, the loving blossoming of the flowers that bloomed there.  
  
In the end, that was all she was - a presence. Not a person with a temperament, opinions, love, laughter, sorrows, hope, dreams, thoughts, fears and annoyances. She was the flower of Midgar, silently blooming and courageously immune to the pesticides of its dead air and dreary splendour. Still, none truly knew her, none but Elmyra with her face ripened and aged by graceful maturity, lovingly lined with laughter, creased with worry and tender frowns. She knew the somewhat enigmatic flower girl that nurtured the city and made herself an unusual living. Selling flowers. As much as she was forgotten by strangers and became an everlasting bright, wilful spirit lingering as a presence, offering flowers and their light, her foster-mother knew her. Knew her and loved her with every shred of her bruised and swollen heart, great with feeling. Aeris was loved. It was enough to set the stars alight and spread the caressing fingers of sunlight and happiness into her spirit.  
  
She was an angel, not because of inhuman perfection but because of her great humanity; filled with joyful flaws as she was filled by hopeful blessings of heart. She was recognised and remembered by few, reduced with a smile to a feeling of warmth that momentarily gave birth to a dancing flame within the corpse-like hold of Midgar's grip. She was not a ghost of a shadow's dream but a dream in herself, the dream of life. The life she was filled with, playfully trimmed with wise intuition, gentility and kindness, great love, sincerity, sweet coquettish style, a bubbly persona armed with a quirky sense of humour and a capacity for charming innocence and understanding maturity. She knew what it meant to be alive and flourished within its ever-grinning light. She seized the moment and knew what it meant to be wild and to echo her laughter and reflect her smiles down the turrets of the labyrinth-like memory of all her loved ones. Next to her, it was all the nameless and faceless strangers that were mere presence's; barely tangible in the dazzle of the world she created inside her imagination and open heart.  
  
The day she left Midgar, to an unknown horizon of adventure and grand discovery of the rich casket of wonders the ripe world offered in open palms as simply and with the same enduring sweetness of nature as she had offered flowers to gloomy strangers, only hollow shadows and whispers next to her. She took a chance on a wild feeling of belonging and a yearning for more, thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge. She felt the warm, protective embrace of true friendship for the first time and with fiery determination wanted to return the feeling with all she had. Most of all she took a chance on the words of a strange young man - both everything and nothing as he seemed, one who intrigued her, enchanted her and awoke painful, disturbing memories. Still, she felt the chains of feelings twine and twist beautifully around her soul and care stir deeply within the core of her soul. Above all, she trusted the odd and remarkable individual that he was and dared to take a wild chance with him and his loyal companions. They all deeply cared for her.  
  
Without a word or nod, she was gone. She had left the dark, dank alleys of Midgar, forsaken the diseased air and kingdom of corporations, technology and dog-eat-dog for the great outdoors, seduced by the promise of her heritage. With cheerful disregard, she flung herself wholeheartedly into the moment, into the adventures of others, their triumphs and trials, and all with a courageous smile, lighting up the world with a defiant optimism that could melt hearts. She saw stars and fireworks alight and anoint glittering and sheltering skies, wild fields with frolicking jade blades of grass flirting with the whispering breeze, knew the quiet thrill of a battle, cared for injured friends with a wave of kindness. She saw great and grand new places; both awe-inspiring and terrifying, happily making an array of new friends whilst remaining stubbornly steadfast and true to the old. Fear challenged her - as it challenged each of them - yet she did not quail nor lose her smiling countenance and hopeful words, so richly flowing from her musical voice.  
  
With her brightness, she brought great warmth and light into the lives she touched, leaving a bitter scar behind with her going. A similar scar scalded the solemn dark layers of Midgar, penetrating through the lonely shadows and striking bemused hearts deeply. They did not miss her or notice that the flower girl had left. None asked absently where the flower girl had gone or wasn't there usually a young lady garbed in pale pink selling flowers on the cold streets. Yet, her presence was gone, leaving a terrible cold hollow where that hopeful spark once reigned.  
  
The girl in pink, with her abundant nut-brown hair, its rich velvet waves gently pulled back in a thick braid, framing a lovely young face, glowing with love and deep smiling eyes, shining a warm green that mirrored all the enchanting greens of nature was gone. Her lips, like two plush rose petals, often curling upwards tenderly in a smile; either arching or truly warm, never smiled again upon a Midgar stranger. They noticed a change, how the world seemed that much darker, as if something special had slipped away, plunging the lost souls of the city into total shadow. But they could never recognise the cause. They never knew the flower girl was gone. Yet her sweet presence had vanished, as had that fiery little spark of something different, something pure that abided within the thick, smothering shadows.  
  
Yet she was gone, never to return, that frail spark of hope swept away, taken in the embrace of a greater destiny. Something changed in Midgar without her, though she was never appreciated - none mourned the loss of her calm yet laughing spirit nor wish to linger in the throes of her conversation, yet they ached for what was gone to be returned. They knew in the deepest lairs of their enchained spirits that something precious was gone. Yet they hardened against the loss, became cold once more, as was the only thing that could be done. They did not miss what they never knew was there. All that mattered was now - calling Aunt Miriam before she threw a tight-lipped fit, reminding themselves to but a new hairbrush or faxing a memo. The planet's martyr was scattered to the drowning seas and nostalgic shores of memory, seeming to be only a dream. A dream of flowers.  
  
Flowers were her dream, as she prayed alone. She prayed for the planet's safety, for new life to prevail against the imperious threat of evil, for hope, for the future and for all her loved ones. She held her love thickly within her, as though it could return a tangible embrace, rather than remaining a phantom feeling, however deep. Her love was with Elmyra, who taught her the ways of people where her real mother had guided her in the ways of the planet and the Cetra. She prayed for all those lingering trapped with the obsidian shades and soulless steel of Midgar, all who did not miss her. And her heart was with her friends, and it beat and bled for them. She had a reason to fight. For Cloud, for the best friend and sister she had found in Tifa with her true and courageous heart, for Barret, Red XIII Cid, noble Cait Sith whom had laboriously earned all their trust and respect now, for lively Yuffie, bursting with energy and Vincent so distant and haunted. She loved them all. They would not forget her.  
  
As if in a dream, surreal and tinged with absent longing, he approached her. Cloud Strife, who moved her gentle heart more than any of the others. He approached her as she had approached him in his sleeping mind; she could not see him though she knew he was there. His troubled and tormented spirit surrounded her with such great feeling, bursting with life. She longed to drown in it. Foot meeting cold marble pillar, he walked closer and closer, his thin frame, pale skin, sharp features, outrageous spiked hair coloured an icy blond fading in the shadow of his eyes. His deep-set piercing Mako gaze of cold and thick sleet; alabaster veined with blue ice, seeming to howl like a winter wind. Eyes so different to her own gems of gleaming malachite, like a warm river of loving green, reflecting the summer sun.  
  
He was the reason that had drawn her away from dreary slums into the unknown, it was his own cold, seemingly empty soul that had drawn her, like a brittle-winged moth to a darting flame.  
  
Her emerald eyes fluttered open and took in the sight of him; tormented and stunned by all the conflict inside him and in that moment she was enlightened and the candles of her eyes burst into triumphant flame, the irises bursting into full bloom, inviting him into the window of her soul. He was her life's dream - as she had dreamt of the Promised Land her mother's hauntingly beautiful whispers had painted for her in her mind's eye, she knew she had found it. She had found her Promised Land and ultimate happiness. He was her dream.  
  
She was not shocked or stunned, but accepted it with gentle love as she pulled away from her prayer and gazed at him, the golden moment drawn out forever, her smile of love lighting up the eerie but beautiful chamber and touching Cloud's heart, floating through the walls of ice and gently touching the very core of what he was. As she looked upon her life's dream, her heart overflowed with great love and reason to dream, live hope, and fight and sacrifice for love. She finally understood all the secrets of the Ancients in that moment and her prayer was given a pure life and was answered in a pure white flame, smouldering gently within her treasured materia. She knew perfect happiness.  
  
But in giving her loved ones a future, she gave up her own. Shattering her love's dream was the dark spirit that tore through the moment as surely as his thin blade struck her lithe body, striking through her back and tearing through her stomach. The world stopped. And broke into a thousand pieces, each one cruel and sharpened to a jagged, twisted point as the soul of the flower girl was struck from her body, the blossom that she was ripped out of the wailing earth. Her delicate hands, so reverently clasped in prayer immediately separated, dropping instantly, lifelessly, before her upper body collapsed down, as limp as a rag doll, her thick locks swaying in a grotesque parody of her windswept beauty for a brief moment, her large eyes wide in shock, the light faded from them, forever extinguished, the smile faded from her face. Aeris was gone, only a hollow shell remained.  
  
With sadistic amusement running a forked lighting through her killer's unfeeling eyes, he slowly tore the wicked blade back, retreating out of her broken body. Her form teetered, her limp hands seeming to flail out slightly, reaching to her loved one. Then with a dull thud, she fell forward, her spirit slipping away completely, her eyes closing to eternally hide her fresh green gaze, the last thing in her awareness the feeling of the cold touch of the marble floor, the numb ache where a shrieking pain had momentarily passed and the feel of strong arms embracing her holding her close. The last thing she heard was the broken sobs of one drowning in grief and the faint sound of a materia orb striking the marble pillars and tumbling into the cool, crystalline waters below. With that, she departed with gentle regret to the past tense, to memories.  
  
There was no way to rationalise what occurred in the living world, as it was not real to a heartbroken Cloud. His senses were drowned in a thousand feelings, the fear, the loss, the love, the hate, the coldness, the loss - he could do nothing. It was not real, Aeris couldn't die, his mind raged. All that happened was a blur as he gently shook her body, attempting to wake her. no response. He shook again, harder, desperation and horror filling his blazing eyes. In a moment, realisation crashed upon him, burning his dreams and hopes, murdering them as cold-bloodedly as the dark figure and object of his hate had murdered innocent Aeris. There was no cold fact in such a world, only numbing feelings; he felt that dreadful ache where his heart had been, he felt a longing to hold her, hoping he could exchange tears for her life. He experienced an emptiness filling him and hollowing him as he had never before felt. Where the loss had broken him, burning hate grew and the hunger for revenge, clinging on to the hopeless idea that angry revenge could change things. Words escaped him as he trembled like a child, waves of sorrow crashing on his vulnerable soul, pulling him down into their bitter depths. His world was the realisation that Aeris was gone, the disarming pain within him that stung and stabbed deeper with every passing moment. A hot tangle of tears fell down his face for the first time in his memory and beyond the horizon of his mourning, his suffering, the cold stab of loss, lay bloodlust.  
  
Battle followed, though it passed like a dream. What passed after that lay in the land of dreams too. He recalled the grief of his companions, their bitter tears, shedding their innocence as a team. He recalled picking up her body, holding her limp form, once so full of life, now robbed of all that she was, and walked away, his eyes glittering and reddened. His dream had died. Where the hundred of ignorant strangers would not notice her absence or miss her, he would for all of them. The colour of the world faded with the wound of her loss, the brightness fleeing with her innocent soul, leaving it as icy and shrouded as the dank streets of Midgar.  
  
He had to let her go. In a spinning tumble of sorrow, Aeris, the flower girl was laid to rest, a mysterious smile still lingering on her face, so still. She was still seeming to be as full of vibrant life; as though she was only asleep rather than a cold corpse, robbed of her warm spirit. Her life's dream had been discovered and she flowed down, as her white legacy had dropped into the reflective recesses of water. Her hair flowed and fanned out loosely like a dark halo as her limp body drifted downwards, the gentle colours of the water caressing her fallen body, plant life draping her cold shoulders as she seemingly slumbered in their cold embrace, the sunlight mourning her, now only a spark of shimmering light breaking of the smooth surface of the lake. Lost in their depths was a flower girl.  
  
Her spirit drifted from the living into the brilliant green, so full of joy and comfort of the lifestream, her spiritual home, the voices of her race calling to her with musical beauty. She departed silently, floating from cool depths of water into the protective power of Holy and further down into the warmth of a thousand souls. The few people who knew and loved her drifted away, longing to linger and whisper their goodbyes, floating away akin to amber leaves, dancing in an autumn wind, taking lone flight on a precarious wing having lost the nurture of their guardian tree. Though the vast tangle of blurred passers-by forgot, her friends forever remembered.  
  
In the emerald depths, she lay waiting in the flow of souls, drifting towards the promised land. Her Promised Land being the chance to drift free and hold her ultimate happiness one final time in the decaying core of the earth, having finally destroyed his inner-demons. In a spiral of emerald dreams, she would reach out to him in the shades of the future and he - no longer a broken man - would smile, mirroring that hopeful, loving expression she knew so well. Each knowing ultimate happiness.  
  
Away, away, her spirit drifted with quiet regret, her life's dream alive and eternal.  
  
And forever smiling.  
  
*THE END* 


End file.
